How to Start a Private Jet Charter Business With No Money | Kolin Jones of Amalfi Jets

19:51James Altucher:entire selection of concrete mixes and supplies in store and on menards.com. Plus check out the weekly flyer for more great deals happening now.

20:08That we know about. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe once or twice a week. How often do people actually do it? Probably a little bit more often than that. Don't the pilots see what's going on in the cabin? Well, I mean, if you take like a typical Gulf Street, you have your cockpit, you have a jump seat, and then you actually have like a door that you close to separate like the cockpit and crew area from the passengers. And some clients say, I don't want to interact with anybody. I just want to be on board. Don't bother me. So literally the flight attendant will just sit in the cockpit with the pilots for the entire 10, 12-hour flight, check on them maybe once or twice.

20:38So probably happens quite often. There's no video, though, in the cockpit of looking at the cabin? No. No, I don't think there are any reasons there would be. No, and that's the thing. Like it's very different than flying commercial. Like there's no cockpit door. Like my favorite thing being a pilot and an aviation geek about flying private is honestly I spend half my private jet flights sitting in the cockpit, just chatting with the pilots the entire time. Because, you know, ever since 9-11, obviously you should be able to visit the cockpit pre-9-11 and go chat with the pilots even on your commercial flight.

21:06Can't do that anymore. So it's really cool and really awesome to see for non-pilots what the cockpit's like at 43 ,000 feet or on an approach or on a landing. So that's really fun. And like a couple of times I've flown with my friends. One of my friends is just the most nervous flyer on the planet. And it was, we were on a big airplane. We're on a global, right? We're flying to Vegas. It was like a 35 minute flight. And she was just like having a pan attack. She was freaked out. And I was like, you know what? Let's do this. We walked up to the cockpit and the pilot was just like walking her through everything, pointing everything out in the cockpit, showing her how it worked.

21:34And then, you know, she went back. She felt a lot more comfortable when she landed. And she was like, wow, that's really cool. She's like, I've never seen a cockpit mid-flight. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. So there's a lot more experiences that you can experience flying private.

21:44James Altucher:And so you were 19 years old. It was COVID. And there were already private jet brokerages all over the place. Correct. But these people were not pilots. So again, you know, going back to what I was saying, there's no certification required. So like looking actually into a lot of these competitors at this time, I mean, these people like super respectfully were coming from working at like enterprise rent-a-car to revolutionizing the private jet space. We're not pilots. I've never flown an airplane, I never flown on a private jet. I'm like, how are you, like, if you were in this space and you were dealing with people's lives, I think a lot of times people look at the money and the flashy and the glamour aspect of private jets, but if you go back to the core business, you're literally dealing with people's lives and getting people around the world safely.

22:24So we have to prioritize that. So there's so many situations that we turn down and about a million dollars, probably a week of deals that we lose to illegal or questionable trips. Meaning we send a client a quote, let's say it costs$50 ,000. Client reaches out and says, I have another jet from some other company for$30 ,000 cheaper. And I'm like, all right, show me this airplane. I'm looking at this airplane. I'm looking at the tail number and I'm like, this isn't a legal 135 certified airplane. Like whose jet is this? And it was like, oh, well, it was this company. It was like his friend of a friend's airplane.

22:55And I was like, okay, do you know how often this friend of a friend's airplane was maintained? Like, do you know who the pilots are? Are they actually even pilots? And they're like, oh, I don't know, but it's$20 ,000 cheaper. And I was like, you're going to risk your life. You're worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You're going to risk your life to save$20 ,000 here. So that does happen. So we try to use our social media and conversations like this to educate as many people possible on the dangers of a legal charter. Because if you look at that post-COVID world, right, you have an insane amount of people that are moving towards flying private.

23:24It's very addicting. There is so much opportunity to make a lot of money in the space. And if you and I freaking bought a jet and hire random people to be pilots, you can make so much money in this industry. And there needs to be more regulation, needs to be more transparency, because that is a big problem that a lot of people don't recognize. So we've been trying to show people this isn't a multi-certified airplane. Here's what this airplane is. Here are the pilots. Here's how many hours. We have a full pilot report that we send over. Most companies don't, which is really sad. So you're 19. And what did you start doing?

23:56What's the first step? What did you do? So how to start a company that is going to do$140 million in revenue this year, six years ago, 19 years old? Well, first one, build a website. So I'm freaking GoDaddy, AmaltiJets.com, own that. Then an email. Boom, get set up. Great. So Amalti exists as a company. How do we get clients? Well, I would literally go to Starbucks and I'm a business partner, one of my best friends from high school, Calvin. He's the finance, like our chief legal officer, I always joke, but he's kind of the aviator, the finance guy behind the scenes. I'm the aviation business kind of operation side there.

24:29So when we literally meet at Starbucks, and this is still, I was in my dorm at college. So we would like Zoom and then I would fly back every two weeks on a Spirit Airlines flight from Orlando to LAX so I could work with him for the weekend. And we just needed to Starbucks. And I would literally Google, I was like, I don't know. I've never flown privately at this point. I was like, I don't know rich people. So I would literally Google Los Angeles attorneys. And the funny thing about attorneys is their website always have their emails public. And I was like, great, this is a free client list. So I would literally, no joke, email every single freaking Los Angeles attorney under the sun, whether you're personal injury, whether you're M &A, whether you're corporate, whether you're immigration, literally any freaking attorney, I can guarantee I've emailed every single one of them practically.

25:10And said, hi, my name's Colin, I'm all VJets. We're one of the leading high VJ charter companies. Our prices are very competitive. We're very focused on safety. The next time you want to fly private, please reach out. We'd love to compare our pricing with whatever you're currently I find. And my thing there was, all right, every day I sent 2 ,500 emails and I did this every day for two months. It would pretty much be statistically impossible that I wouldn't get one or two sent. So it's a big numbers game. And I looked at it and I was like, all right, let me think about my competitors here. So I have a competitor, let's say that they show up to the office nine to five, eight hours, an hour for lunch to seven hours.

25:43I was like, let's say this competitor actually is good, right? And maybe he's really aggressive and he's cold calling and he's sending some emails. He's maybe. And he's cold calling, he's cold calling like legal firms, corporate, corporate offices. I mean, just every, essentially anyone that flies private, you can Google like what companies fly private, what industries. So, you know, again, personal injury, really big niche. Oil, gas companies, construction is a really big one. Entertainment, private equity, VC and stuff like that. And I was like, well, my competitors are probably sending maybe three to 400 emails a day.

26:12And I was like, all right. So if in one day I sent 2 ,500 emails, I'm essentially doing six of his days in one of my Amalfi days. And I was like, so if I did one of my Amalfi days every day for a month, I will be three to four months ahead of my nearest competitor. And that's what I did. I would literally freaking email everybody. I would Google, I don't know who's rich. Oil? All right, how do I get oil companies things? So I'd literally call these random companies. Say, hey, man, I'm calling Amalfi Jazz. I was speaking with your CEO. I just want to confirm his email really quick. And then I would kind of lead that and get the email.

26:39I'd be like, awesome, great. Thank you so much. We'll send me a mail. Have a great day. Boom, I've seen. Great. So I could email him. but then I can be like, oh, hey, I just spoke with Sarah, your receptionist. She was really sweet. I just wanted to follow up on our conversation. I would just try to get as many conversations as possible. Did this six months in. Little client responds. It says, hi, Thon. Thanks for emailing me. Yeah, I was about to book a jet with this other company. Please let me know what you would charge for this trip. And I was like, oh my God, here it is. My first sale. Let's do it.

27:02And it was a trip from LA to Cabo and back. And it was on a Phenom 300. And we charged$25 ,000. This was in 2020, right? And so this was a long time ago. And on that trip, hey, Colin, you're$25 ,000. This other company is like$25 ,500 or whatever, but I know them, I flow with them. So anything you can do on price. Meanwhile, this jet cost me$24 ,500. And I was like, I wasn't making any money on this airplane. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to take the Jeff Bezos approach. I'm going to be like Amazon and we're going to lose money and just build loyalty. So I sold it to him for$20 ,000.

27:36So something crazy enough that he would be like, wow, Colin is so much cheaper than my guy. And I was like, yeah, I don't know why he's charging you 25. That's crazy. I'll charge you for 20. So boom, lost$4 ,000 on the first sale. Then he came back again, did the same thing, lost a couple more thousand dollars. And I was like, you know what? I need to be so freaking cheap that this guy needs to tell his friends on the golf course, God, yeah, this call guy is so freaking cheap. I didn't know how I was making money. I wasn't making money. I was losing so much money. I'm stupid. But did you have like, how did you have the money to lose?

28:05The beginning, and this is why I'm very thankful for American Express, and America Express is a very instrumental part is if I sold it at a$4 ,000 loss, I could carry that balance for 30 to 40 days, which gave me enough time to make a sale to offset that, you know, that essentially difference. And I think every business owner has that mentality of like, how can you be cheap? Because again, there's no investors. I was college student. I maybe had maybe$1 ,000 in my bank at this point being freshman. So I was like, all right, like the actual operating expenses of the company, I mean, you have a website and email and things, you're at maybe$100 a month.

28:39Then I was like, all right, so boom, with my thousand bucks, I have a near business guarantee. Great. But we customers. So after that, after his third or fourth flight, then I started making a little bit of money, a thousand bucks there, two thousand bucks. And I was like, hey, I can give you free catering if you can refer me to two people. Send me in a group chat with two people. And then from that, it slowly kind of just brighter web. And then other, some clients started to respond. And you'll have a situation where I was like, oh, wow, this guy's other company is 28 ,000. I can sell it for 27 and actually still make some money.

29:06So slowly grew from there. And again, we just started focusing on doing that. I was like, how can we build good personalized service where I was the one that I was selling the trips and I was handling the operations, the catering. I was their first call when they landed. I was the first call when they needed the next trip. And that kind of slowly spiderwebbed, obviously, but not to the point that it did until we started posting on social media. So we started posting on social media end of 2024. And when we posted, I was very, very against it. And at this point, again, we slowly hired some people in the company.

29:36We had like one person marketing. We added more like salespeople somewhere commissionally. So we still at least kind of started to go. I think we had eight people at this time. And I was like, I feel like we can be on social media. Because I was like researching the jet space. And obviously all these competitors that have been in the industry for 10, 20, 30 years. These are very well capitalized, very well resourced companies. And I was like, they have millions of dollars to spend on marketing. I was like, we're not going to out market that. And my original goal for Amalfi Jets was how can we be the most pretentious Ritz Carlton private jet company?

30:05But that's already been done. I was like, I'm not going to freaking outbrand companies that practically invented private jets. So that's when we looked at social media and our marketing team was like, hey, why don't we post on TikTok? And I was like, guys, that's unprofessional. Clients are going to see that and think that we're a joke. I was like, I don't want to do that. But then I was like, well, hold on a minute. These companies are so corporate-y, boringly, dinosaur-y professional. I was like, I'm not going to outbrand them. And I was like, but what if we were more provocative and more ridiculous than that?

30:33So that's what we posted on TikTok. And then it was one of our first stories where I was talking about one of our clients who had a mistress and pretty common. And I remember posting that video about how one of our clients shot two airplanes, one for his wife, one for his mistress. And that video got a million views. And I was like, oh, wow. And not only did it hit a million views, but then I logged into Google Analytics and I saw that we had 150 ,000 people on our website. And I was like, oh, my God. And I looked at our website forms and we had 15 ,000 flight requests that one day. And I was like, oh my God.

31:03I was like, this is it. I was like, how much would I need to do of spend on Google ads or freaking print ads in order to get that amount of engagement? And I was like, that TikTok costs us nothing. And I was like, oh, this isn't going to be good. So I was very, very against our TikTok. And I was like, this is unprofessional. People are going to see it. And I was like, you know what? Screw it. We are going to be the most freaking provocative private jet company. Because again, like on the mass media, you know, if you look at the inner workings of the private jet space. There's never been a TV show.

31:32There's never been a social media that really gives you that inner looking of what that world's like. On the yacht side, you have like Below Deck and things like that. You have all the real estate shows, but there's never been something like that on the private jet side. So we started posting on social media and I mean, we just kept talking about the situations that we're encountering, showing the office culture. A big thing that we wanted to do, and I guess kind of our like three main goals is how can we spread awareness about the private jet space and get people that inner working? Two, how can we personify the brand?

31:59People buy from people, right? So I was like, how can we humanize the team networks here? How can we show our genuine personalities? And three, how can we be the most well-known private aviation company in the freaking world? And what, a year and a half, two years later, we have 4 million followers across everything. We get over a billion impressions every quarter. And if you look at that, that directly, you know, leads to 80, 85 % of our inbound leads and the engagement. And it's funny because we track a different qualification rate per platform. TikTok reaches the most amount of people. But TikTok tends to reach the kids.

32:33And I get a lot of phone calls of 50, 60, 70-year-old, ultra-conservative people that are not on social media that are like, hey, Colin, I've been flying with BlinkJets for the past 40 years. I've never heard of your company, but my daughter is just obsessed with you guys. Like, she said I should reach out. And I'm like, sure. And then I send them my pricing and they're like, oh, you're like 20 % cheaper than what I've been paying this entire time. And I was like, yeah, we've been here the entire time. They fly with us, realize that we're a legit company and not just a TikTok. you know, social media account.

32:58And they're like, wow, this is great. And then now, boom, now we've gotten a customer from that. Instagram is an interesting blend of both. You have some of your end user customers. You have your, you know, kids as well. Facebook is just the most qualified, older, conservative, like boomer level people that are still on Facebook, that see our Facebook shorts and reels and stuff on that. And then YouTube is funny because YouTube is the amount of people that we get from YouTube that are like, oh, I'm not on social media. And I'm like, well, YouTube is kind of like social media, I guess. But it's just social media.

33:30They come in and they convert. So we track different qualification rate per platform. But it's funny because, I mean, now we are so viral that I go in public and people are like, hey, you're the jet guy. And I was like, exactly. I am the jet guy. There are no other private jet companies. Don't even think about it. We are the only one. So we've been trying to kind of own that, that like societal and that social market share. And it's funny. I was at a bar a couple weeks ago and this guy was like, hey, Colin, it's really great to meet you. I'm in private equity. You know, I followed your company.

33:58And he's like, it's really smart what you guys do. And I was like, oh, I really appreciate that. I was really against it. And he's like, no, he's like, I can't even name another private jet company. And I was like, yeah, neither can I. I don't know anybody else. But like, that's the whole point is that if we can be so loud, you don't even think about it.

34:19James Altucher:So what's the components of, other than the private jet aspect, which is very glamorous, What are the components of a viral TikTok that you do? Like, what's your storytelling technique that you tell all your creators to make? Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is how do we, you know, kind of go back to our core ethos of like, how can we consistently personify the people that work here? People buy for people. So it's like, how can we show people's personalities? How can we show some of that humor? How can we also, I don't want to say like poke fun at the situations that we're at, but it's like, these are real, true, crazy situations.

34:53Like the client pooping on the airplane. So we had this client who's, you know, normally you bring a dog and where the dog poops are, whatever. But we get a call from the flight attendant saying, hi, your client pooped on the couch. And now we need to take the airplane out of service for 24 hours to clean this poop. In addition, if they need to replace this couch, it's like an$80 ,000 couch like credenza on this Gulf Street. And the ops team walks in like, hold on, what do we do? And I was like, I don't know. They don't teach this at business school. Like, I don't know what to do. We clean the freaking couch with all the clients and say, hey, you need to take the freaking couch.

35:24Right. So it's just funny because it's like, like we want to show that these are. Why couldn't he pull in the bathroom? That's a great question. I've been asking myself that for a very, very long time. Like the client, the call from the pilot, hi, Tullin, your client punched me in the face. Oh, my God. I am so sorry. They were on a fuel stop in the middle of. It was a Texas at like one or two in the morning. And our flight ops is tracking the airplane. The client got punched. And I was like, dude, like, I don't know. I was like, well, it's really hard to get. It's easy to get kicked off a commercial airplane.

35:53You say the wrong thing, you get kicked off in two seconds. We all see it all over the internet. But I was like, it's really hard to get kicked off a private jet. And I don't know what happened. We're dealing with it. I'm calling the pilot back and speaking with their operator partner. And then flying up to my office and I'm like, Colin, they took off. I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, they just made up and got back on the airplane and called the pilot. And he's like, yeah, he apologized. And I was like, OK, like, and you're good with that. And he's like, he apologized. He's like, he did you pretty well.

36:15And we just kind of forgot it. It's like, okay.

36:17James Altucher:So he felt bad. In those cases, the pooping and the punching, what was the approximate net worth of the passenger? One was probably a couple hundred million, but was very big in crypto and crypto was not doing well. So I'm assuming there was a lot of additional stress there. And one was very high, but it was given to him. So he came into money from his parents and his family. I mean, there is a trend. Like our highest net worth of richest top spending customers are not always flying on the big, gigantic airplane. Most of the time, it's a small light jet for a trip. And I'm like, hey, don't you want the Gulfstream?

36:52And it's like, well, I don't need it. It's just me. I'm going to get there in 45 minutes. I don't need the fancy airplane. Whereas the clients that, I don't want to say can't afford it, but maybe shouldn't be flying private, are the ones that are ordering the champagne, the caviar, oysters, and all the fancy stuff, and pulling up in a freaking rented Lamborghini. Like, you know, that's the thing of like, it's funny. Like our original marketing team was like, hey, let's do a photo shoot at the jet with the Ferraris and stuff. And I was like, I don't remember the last time one of my clients ever pulled up to a jet in an actual Ferrari that wasn't rented.

37:19I was like, most of the highest net worth clients are showing up maybe just in like an Uber or even a taxi, jeans and a T-shirt, but maybe like a$400 ,000 watch. And you don't know who they are and you have to Google that. And then they sold their company for a billion dollars a couple of years ago. Those are the most down to earth, most understanding people because they used to be business owners.

37:38James Altucher:So they understand how our model works. Do you think there's a lot more people worth like 100 billion plus than we realize? Oh, yeah. Now, there is a lot more people that fly private. Like a lot of our new sales guys is like, hey, this is really hard. We're selling at the 1%. I was like, well, I mean, yeah, but there's a lot more people that fly private. Like we are, you know, this year on factory do about 120 million, which makes us one of the top 10 brokers in the space. In six years, it took some companies 15, 20, 30 years to get there. However, we do not own a crazy, big, gigantic market share.

38:07There's so much room for people flying private in. Honestly, I blame the commercial airlines. As long as the delay is happening, I mean, you look at the funding lapse of TSA, those delays at the airport are freaking insane that if you have a business meeting that you must make it, you cannot consistently rely on the airlines and all the issues with the TSA and the airports and delays and stuff like that, especially because the airlines operate on the hub and spoke system and these airplanes are at mass utilization. So one delay early in the day just completely torpedoes the rest of the day schedule.

38:34Whereas prior to Jets, that airplane is dedicated for you at least when you want, you have a dedicated crew. Sometimes, you know, for really big trips for high net worth clients, we'll actually have a backup airplane. So you can pay like a certain fee and we'll have another airplane fuel up ready to go. So if this airplane breaks or something, boom, you're not delayed. Obviously it's expensive, but if you must make it to this meeting and under no circumstances, can you miss it? Then what is an additional 10, 20, 30 K for that sort of piece of line? And that's what I always like talking about because like a lot of clients are like, wow, oh, private jets are so expensive, but it's like 30, 40 % of our trips are not crazy big business deals.

39:10It's you have a CEO that is running a very big multinational company that will charter a jet to be back for their son or daughter's baseball game or a ballet recital or something like that and be there, be present, and then make it back to work. And it's like, if you look at that, someone's like, wow, private jets are expensive, but it's like, how do you put a price on being there for your kids? So if you're able to afford it, that is something that is worth paying for. and that is the beauty of private aviation is that you cannot do that commercially. So if you could show up somewhere, do that, and be there and leave, like for most of our clients, I know they would say that is worth billions of dollars to be there for that moment.

39:44Therefore, the cost of the jet is almost negligible, right? In situations like that.

39:49James Altucher:So it's so interesting to me how, like realistically, it is a lot more expensive than commercial. So let's say first class from New York to LA is what? Like 3 ,000, 4 ,000 Delta 1 or like JetBlue Man. Right. And so, but a private jet's going to cost you like$60 ,000. One way on a Gulfstream, about$45 ,000. And then one way on a Citation 10, about$35 ,000. A Lightjet, maybe$30 ,000. Oh, what a get? Yes. If it's just you, yes. But then we do have some customers that have to think about it. Like, let's take a Gulfstream, right? So Gulfstream, let's say it's 12 people for a company that are going from New York to LA.

40:24You know,$4 ,000 commercial airlines flight plus 12, right? We're at$40 ,000. Then you have the time at the airport, driving to JFK and stuff like that. Whereas in a situation like that, if those 12 people could fit on a Gulfstream and pay 45 ,000, it's actually cheaper. You're flying direct at a T-de-bro, so you're actually buying that three to four hours back at your time. So for 12 employees in a multinational company at like a directorate level, what does that four hours do? That's half of a workday. How much more money could they make in that moment? Yeah. Well, a lot of times it's simply just like the flight schedules don't align.

40:58meeting, all right, hey, I have a really big speaking engagement. My speaking engagement is done at 1130 p.m. in Georgia. I need to fly back home to Charleston, South Carolina. All right, well, the next commercial airline flight is at seven in the morning, and then you need to fly to Charlotte and then Charleston. All right. Whereas if you could just charter even a cheap, like a Platus PC with TurboProp, pay eight grand to, you know, just to leave at midnight to get there exactly when you want. All right. Well, that now allows you to have that full work day tomorrow. And for a good, successful CEO, you can make more than eight grand in that day.

41:27James Altucher:You know, for the cities that you operate out of that are very high use, like let's say New York or LA or Miami, have you considered doing kind of like a semi-private thing, kind of people who get your card or whatever? It's a regular flight from New York to Miami, from Teterboro to... A lot of our competitors have done that. I mean, again, some of these are private jets. Most of these, I would call them a VIP airliner. So you have like a configured CRJ200 or a Chandra 850 that has like a two-in-one seat. So it's a nice leather seat. It's a flight standard, but it's on a private jet. I mean, all it is, is in my opinion, it's just nice first class.

42:04There's companies that do it that I don't know if they do it well for us. And we don't like, again, like in the private jet world, the two most popular flights in the States are a north to south or south to north. So New York, Miami, Miami, and vice versa for people transiting their different homes. And then the second is New York to LA, LA to New York. It's the second most popular they're rude. And then the third is LA to Vegas and back. So we've talked about it out there. There is some regulation. It's called part 380 charter in order to sell charter by deceit. Some companies have tried it. Those companies do not still do that.

42:37And I guess the big issue with stuff like that is like based on the part 380 laws, essentially, if you sell X number of seats, the airplane needs to fly. Meaning if we charter a Gulfstream G4 that seats 12 people from Van Nuys to Tiber, so Elliot in New York, and we sell each seat for five grand, right, five or six thousand, right? Because you can charge more than the commercial airlines because it's a better experience. If we sell every seat, sure, we'll make$30 ,000 a trip. But what happens if we only sell two seats? Well, we can't cancel every time we lose money. So boom, now on that one trip, you're losing 20 grand.

43:08Okay, what happens if you bet again? Now you're gonna lose another 20 grand. So it's really easy to hemorrhage cash really quick or grab. And I think with the way that our model is growing is my biggest thing is like, we know what we're good at. Let's consistently excel at that. But Amalfi, and like we've kind of positioned us where we have like three main parts of our company. So we have the aviation side. We have our technology side. There's 72 ,000 members on the Amalfi Jets app. So how can we build a platform that allows people to engage with our services, engage with 24-7 concierge team, but also on our tech side?

43:39We built some really, really cool stuff, both on the kind of AI fleet optimization. So we track different aircrafts in order to kind of track seasonal demand. So if we notice a bunch of airplanes are sitting in the West Coast and need to make it to the East Coast, but then I have clients that need to fly to the East Coast, how can we pair these clients up with these airplanes that need to go there, allowing them to pay cheaper than the market, get quoted quicker by flying with Amalfi, and be able to book it all through our tech infrastructure? So that is a really, really big priority for us, and that's something that we're still analyzing.

44:08And the other thing that we built is a social listening tool. So when we post videos, I know with certain why our videos go viral, what the hook was, how well I spoke. Statistically, I perform, I think it's like 36 % better if I wear a black t-shirt. I don't know if it makes me look slim. I don't know why, but I like wearing a black t-shirt and I perform better. If I wear a white t-shirt, it doesn't go as viral. In addition, if we film here at my desk, it goes a little bit more viral. I think it's like 12 or 20 % more viral because we've tried to analyze this. All right, well, is it because people see the background like, hey, that's following from all these tasks where they see them all the dots or maybe the colors or maybe the fancy bottle of wine I'm a visitor for, I mean, I have no idea, right?

44:46But when we also show the dynamics of our office, you know, you have those recurring characters. Like we have clients that fly with us all the time that are like, hey, how's the team? Hey, how is Daniel from Fight Office? I really want Daniel from Fight Office to be on my trip. And I'm like, wow, you remember Daniel from that video like, you know, a couple months ago. That's crazy. But people like kind of feel that connected. It's kind of the same way that like if you watch your favorite and again, I'm not calling our team here by any means celebrities or influencers or anything like that. I still never call myself an influencer.

45:12I think there's a bad connotation with that. but the same way that if you watch your favorite TV show all the time, you feel connected with the characters. Like Hawaii Five-0 as a kid was my favorite TV show. So to be able to watch Steve McGarrett on there, like if I met him first and I'm like, Steve, what's up? It's good to see you. Same thing when people watch our videos of like, people feel connected to the team here. So that really builds a lot of loyalty. And we still get a lot of great customers that are like, hey, Colin, I've been flying with XYZ jets for the past 10 years. As long as you're the same or even a little bit more expensive, I just want to fly with Molfi.

45:41Can I do that? Also, can you send me some cool Molfi merch? Because I want to wear it. Right. So that's right. Now, the social media just totally changed the whole business. No other private jet company, from my understanding, is posting at the level that we post. We have the Amalfi account. We have our reserve membership. We have the call-in account. We post eight times a day. Wow. Every day. Well, eight times a day across all of our accounts on TikTok. And if you add that up on all the other accounts, essentially, there's like 30 or 40 videos that go live on all the accounts every single day.

46:11because we post on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok. We post everywhere, right? So I'm a very big competitive person as a kid. I did a bunch of sports, always was terrible at sports, but I was very, very competitive when it comes to business. So I know, and I have a charter in my office that shows me, and I've done math on how much all of my competitors make, what the revenue is, how many employees they have, how much their employees make. So I want to understand where Amalfi ranks within this whole competitive nature. But then also I talked to the team. And I was like, how can we bury our competitors?

46:44And it's not necessarily beat them or hurt these competitors, but it's like, how can you bury people with irrelevance? We're the most followed private aviation company in the world. So when people think about private jets, and when people see a jet taking off, they should be like, hey, that's an Amalfi jet, even if it's completely not a airplane, but if it's jet-based, it's a airplane. No, no, no, that's an Amalfi air, right? And I think if we can keep pushing that, and that's why a lot of our social media, we collaborate and film videos with people that have absolutely nothing to do with private aviation.

47:12A lot of our competitors, I was sure, 10, 20, 30 years ago. I mean, these companies are dinosaurs. We posted one of our videos on LinkedIn and this woman from a competitor commented on it on LinkedIn. And she was like, this is the most unprofessional thing I've ever seen. This is not the way it's always been done. That comment is framed in our office. And that is the point. So many people in this industry always do things because this is the way it's always been done. And if you do it the way it's always been done, you will always get what you've always gotten. So we are trying to be as loud and as provocative as possible, because in order to get things you've never had, you got to do things you've never done.

47:48And with the amount of videos that we've posted and the other people that have nothing to do with jets that we can post about, because people that have no business or are never going to fly private, when someone asks them, hi, talk about a private jet, they're like, oh, I'm all for jets, right? And that to us is so freaking valuable because that brand equity is something that you can't really buy it. Our competitor couldn't jump in TikTok, throw hundreds of millions of dollars behind it. You still, you can't change public opinion in that way. So it's great for us because also being a business owner that doesn't have any investors, we don't have any debt, we're not on this, you know, kind of VC or private equity world.

48:26I'm still very cheap and very frugal. So like I can't stand wasting money. So that's like our team was like, hey, let's spend money on Google ads. And like, well, hold on, all of our competitors do that. And I was like, Like if we're going to spend$30 ,000,$40 ,000 on a month of Google ads, we would need to get 10, 20 customers from that. And if we don't, now I've wasted$40 ,000 and I'll never get back. I was like, how can we deploy$40 ,000 in a TikTok video? So one of my favorite videos that we filmed was Joss on our team and I, we raced to Vegas. I flew private, he flew spirit. And we raced to see who would get to Vegas better.

48:58And that video maybe cost us$25 ,000,$30 ,000, but we directly tracked, I think it was like$4.7 million of revenue just from that one video. Wow. And that video didn't get the most amount of views on YouTube, but those long-form videos build loyalty because you feel connected with the people on our team as you see us in a more natural setting. But then that one 20-minute video can get clipped up into 30 or 40 or 50 videos right across multiple accounts, gathering views and building that loyalty that then we can convert. So it's like social media is great. And I see a lot of our competitors start and try to post on social media.

49:30Some of them fully just copy our videos and just say, blank jets, this is blank. And I'm like, all right, we kind of did that first. But social media is great. But how does social media feel top of funnel? So great. You get all these people that know about your brand. Great. But where do you send them? All right. We need to send them to a website. All right. Well, is your website ready to receive that amount of traffic? Is your phone number ready to receive that amount of traffic? We used to, when you call the main line, 1-877-6-AMOLFI, it would just kind of go to different sales reps. And then we posted a video, as our most viewed video, got 50 million views on TikTok.

50:02Across everything, it was 170 million. That phone and our signals team's physical phones were unusable for the entire day because it would not stop bringing, because it was just so many calls. And I was like, all right, we need to fix this. So we have seven receptionists that answer the phone and qualify and filter out calls before they forward to our team. Because I was like, wow, that was really funny. Like, I didn't realize that was a thing. So it's like, it's been fun for our team to deal with these growing pains. But I think that really separates the companies that have good success is like, great, you can have this great engagement, but if you're not doing anything with it, if you're not capitalizing it, if you're not actually understanding how that's going to work, then you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot, right?

50:43James Altucher:Now, do you run into any competition from these new things like the PS terminals, which almost give a private jet experience, but at the commercial airports? I think they're in LA, Atlanta. Yes, it's fantastic. My business partner's a member. He uses it all the time. PS is one of our, they're a partner of ours. So if you fly commercially with Amalfi and you're on an Amalfi One jack card program, you get one free use. And a lot of our customers, I'm sure, will go on and purchase that PS membership. It's fantastic. I can't say anything terrible about it because I've used it and it's absolutely wonderful.

51:14But it's interesting. I'm glad you brought that up because some of our highest net worth customers will still fly commercial. Meaning I had a client at the base in LA and he wanted to go to London. If you were to charter a goal with 6 ,000, man, I still lend in one way. it's got$150 ,000, right? It was just him and his wife, they're going on vacation. And he was like, why would I spend$150 ,000 if I could drive to LAX, hop on the first class British Airways flight and make it there in the exact same amount of time? And I was like, you're right, it doesn't make sense. But what if he was going to Sicily and he did that later that summer?

51:42Well, from LA to Sicily, there's no direct flights. That would have been flying from LA to London, then to, I think, Florence or Milan, then driving. Whereas if you fly private, you can fly directly into the airport direct from LA. So that is when he decided to spend$180 ,000 on that one trip there. So that's the thing. It's like a lot of our clients pay for that convenience because like commercial airline service and it's direct between airports. I mean, your private jet will physically fly faster. You're talking maybe five, 10 minutes. You're landing in a smaller airport, but the real time savings are at the airport and honestly the convenience factor of it.

52:13But when you're flying to small places in the, I don't want to say in the middle of nowhere, but just not primarily served by commercial airlines, flying to a river can be a lot more efficient. Like people go into the Amangiri hotels, one of the biggest locations. If I'm not mistaken, there's no direct but commercial airline service from LA into Page, Arizona, and then you drop. People I think are flying into Vegas or Salt Lake City or something in like drive. Well, private jet can fly directly to Page and then I think it's like a 30 or 40 minute drive and then back. So it's like flying private made that one trip a lot more seamless, whereas commercials would have been a lot worse.

52:43But I mean, LA to Vegas, that is one of my favorite trips that we sell a lot because I love to see a bunch of like bachelors who will split a jet on like nine different credit cards, but then they'll all go to Vegas. It's the first time you fly private and they have a really good time. So we do have our fair share of your ultra high net worth customers to this is the first and probably only time we're ever going to fly private, but it's just an awesome, really fun experience. So it's really cool to share that with people that are new to private aviation.

53:07James Altucher:And so what's next? You're 24 years old. You have this, you know, 100 million, 120 million revenue private jet business? Do you want to sell it? Do you want to go public? Do you want to sell off a piece to private equity? Like, what's your goal? I think our goal is really flexible. And I think it always ties back to the formation. Why did I start this company? Well, as a kid, I always thought that private aviation was this glorious glamorous thing with the red carpet. When I first found out in the space, reaching out to my competitors and seeing how terrible this industry was, I was like, damn, like I was, I was upset.

53:37I was like, I thought private jets were this awesome, cool industry. And I was like, seeing how it was run. I was like, this sucks. So as long as everything ties back to a core mission, how can we make private aviation the most unparalleled flying experience? How can we make it more efficient? And how can we consistently be the most recognized and followed aviation company? In the next two to three years, our goal is to keep growing. I would love to go public. However, a lot of our competitors have done that and it hasn't gone too well for them. So probably not going public. Our goal would probably be to acquire some smaller companies and to build the kind of standard for aviation or to merge with competitors that I do admire and be a part of their ecosystem, which would be really fun.

54:15Or if private equity wants to partner with us and take a piece, usually they don't provide the best valuations and goals on that front. But if a private equity were to be interested and actually believed in our mission and we got along with well, I think that would be really fun to have that capital to deploy across the team, maybe even end up buying an airplane for our customers and operating on that model. But I think I look to the future and think that there is so much room for growth. If we just bear heads down and focus on the mission, the right opportunity will come.

54:45James Altucher:And when you first, when this first started scaling up and you realized, oh, this is, this is going to be a success. Like I'm going to make a lot of money. I'm going to make a million dollars. I'm going to make$5 million, whatever. What was, when did you first, like, what did you first splurge on for yourself when you realized, oh, I'm going to be rich? This watch, this watch. So I like watches and I used to be a lot bigger into watches, but it's funny. The very first business meeting that ever went with a client in person, he had this watch. It's an Omega Seamaster. You know, again, it's not like a million dollar watch.

55:15It was like$5 ,600,$5 ,700. I remember being at that lunch with him and I had like a cheap Invicta watch. No shade to Invicta, great watches, but it was all I could afford. It was like$110. And I remember being at that dinner and he was telling me, he was like, yeah. And he was like, this watch is the first watch I bought when I sold my company. He's like, I didn't need a Rolex. I didn't need a Richard Biel. This is what I bought. So when we made, shit, I think it was 2 million in a month the first time. I was like, you know what? I've earned that watch. So I went and bought this watch. So it's like a lot of people look at this watch and like, hey, it's not the most expensive watch.

55:46But to me, oh, this watch represents so much more. And that's why I love this. Like I have a lot more expensive watches. But to me, this one means the most to me.

55:53James Altucher:That's cool. Well, look, you have, you know, it's great success. It's an inspirational story, you know, starting at 19. and I love the industry. I just think it's so fascinating, the whole private jet industry, because it really is a whole other world of transportation. And also, it really is underlining how wealthy many people, I mean, you don't see this mostly, but there's so many people. I once had Steve Forbes on the podcast. And I said, you know, I think your Forbes 500, the richest 500 people in the world, I think it's inaccurate. I think there's a lot more wealthy people than you think out there.

56:30James Altucher:Yeah. And he's like, no, no, we do all the, we spend years doing the research. And I'm like, eh, but how would you know if somebody, you know, made money on crypto or made money, you know, they were the second investor in a business that got sold. You just don't know who they are. And I think - A lot of, a lot of high-network people that fly private, fly private, also free privacy. They just don't want to be known. And I think that's pretty common. You'll never see their situations on our social media. But again, 89 % of our social media or any 9 % of our clients, is very simple. It's high-clonated jet, great.

57:00It's$250 ,000, great. Call it, money sent, thanks. Like that's not going to perform as well on TikTok because that's not crazy, right? But it's funny because, you know, there's that saying of like, you can't afford to fly on a private jet once you start flying on a private jet and you don't post about it. And I think that's pretty common and pretty true.

57:18James Altucher:That's funny. Well, Colin, thanks so much for coming on, explaining your business. Good luck on everything going forward and congratulations on your success. I appreciate it. It was a great discussion. Thank you very much.

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